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October 16th, 2010
WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE IN HELL?
By Hank Hanegraaff
“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2 NIV).
The horrors of hell are such that they cause us instinctively to recoil in disbelief and doubt; yet, there are compelling reasons that should cause us to erase such doubt from our minds. First, Christ, the Creator of the cosmos, clearly communicated hell’s irrevocable reality. In fact, He spent more time talking about hell than He did about heaven. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), He explicitly warned His followers more than a half-dozen times about the dangers that lead to hell. In the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25), He repeatedly told His followers of the judgment to come. In His famous story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16), He graphically portrayed the finality of eternal torment in hell.
Furthermore, the concept of choice demands that we believe in hell. Without hell, there is no choice. Without choice, heaven would not be heaven; heaven would be hell. The righteous would inherit a counterfeit heaven, and the unrighteous would be incarcerated in heaven against their wills, which would be a torture worse than hell. Imagine spending a lifetime voluntarily distanced from God only to find yourself involuntarily dragged into His loving presence for all eternity. The alternative to hell would be worse than hell itself in that humans made in the image of God would be stripped of freedom and forced to worship God against their will.
Finally, common sense regarding justice dictates that there must be a hell. Without hell, the wrongs of Hitler’s Holocaust would never be righted. Justice would be impugned if, after slaughtering six million Jews, Hitler merely died in the arms of his mistress with no eternal consequences. The ancients knew better than to think such a thing. David knew that it might seem for a time as though the wicked prosper despite their evil deeds, but, in the end, justice will be served. We may wish to think that no one will go to hell, but common sense regarding justice precludes that possibility.
Click here for the full article.
October 14th, 2010
Successful evangelism involves not only harvesting, but sowing and watering, too. We must never think that because a nonbeliever remained unconvinced by our case that our apologetic has failed. For one encounter is not the end of the story.
William Lane Craig, from Five Views on Apologetics (Zondervan, 2000), p. 288.
Hat tip to Apologetics315
October 10th, 2010
ARE PEOPLE BASICALLY GOOD?
By Rich Deem
Introduction
Many present day philosophies and worldviews claim the people are basically good and that bad or immoral behavior is the exception. The Bible states quite the opposite – that people are selfish and sinful as soon as they are able to express that kind of behavior. Because of this fact, people need a Savior in order to be acceptable to God. In contrast, the implication of the “people are good” worldview is that good people don’t need a Savior. This paper will show that the biblical worldview and not the “people are good” worldview matches reality.
Human Atrocities
If you examine the atrocities perpetrated by people within the last century, you find a huge number of murders. Adolph Hitler killed 6 million Jews prior to and during the second World War. Joseph Stalin killed 20 million Soviet citizens between 1929 and 1939 because they were not politically correct. Mao Tse-tung killed 34 to 62 million Chinese during the Chinese civil war of the 1930s and 1940s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Marxist regime in Cambodia, Kampuchea, in the 1970′s killed over 1.7 million of his own people. These do not include all the people killed in “legitimate” wars.
Many would object to this analysis, since they could claim that these atrocities were perpetrated by only a few individuals. However, these individuals could not have done anything if they were not backed by others, who agreed with their “values.” The vast majority of Germans willingly followed Adolph Hitler and gave their consent to his policy to get rid of the “Jewish problem.”
Communism
A great experiment was performed in the last century that definitively demonstrated the sinfulness of entire generations among an entire people group. The experiment was called Communism. I am not referring to the attempt by Communists to spread Marxism throughout the World through civil wars. What I am referring to is the reaction of the Russian people themselves to the “equality” created under Communism. The basic tenet of Communism is that all people would share equally in the resources of the country. On the surface, that sounds good. In fact, this is what was practiced by the Christian church during the first century.1 The problem with Communism was not the philosophy per se, but the realization by the people that they would not be rewarded for hard work. It didn’t matter how you worked, you got the same reward. At this point, the sinfulness of man stepped into the picture and everybody in the Soviet Union became lazy and indifferent to their responsibilities. This lack of accountability has led to an alcoholism rate of 40% and an abortion rate of over 50%! The sinfulness of all humans was definitely demonstrated in an entire society, so much so, that it led to the eventual economic collapse of the Soviet Union. Communism failed because humans are basically sinful, lazy, and self-centered. The only reason why “Communism” succeeded in the first century Christian Church was that the people had been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.
Click here for the full article.
October 7th, 2010
The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity.
Antony Flew
Quoted in My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism (2004)
October 7th, 2010
Peter Berger is Professor Emeritus of Religion, Sociology and Theology at Boston University, where he directs its Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs. A Lutheran, he studies the secularization of the West, focusing especially on the rift between “ elite culture and the rest of the population.” He sees American Christianity as a force for resisting secularization: “In the U.S., unlike any Western European country, there is enormous popular resistance to this trend [of secularization], especially from evangelical Christians.” He has written numerous influential books that have been widely translated. The University of Munich and Notre Dame have awarded him honorary doctorates.
Click here for a interview transcript of Dr. Berger.
October 5th, 2010
WAS JESUS CRUCIFIED ON A CROSS, OR A TREE?
By Matt Slick
Jesus was crucified on a cross, not a literal tree that had leaves on it. The Greek words for cross and tree are different. Let’s take a look. The Greek word for cross is σταυρός “stauros”: “literally cross, an instrument of capital punishment, an upright pointed stake, often with a crossbeam above it, or intersected by a crossbeam (MT 27.32); (2) by metonymy, as the means of atonement punishment of the cross, crucifixion (PH 2.8); as a religious technical term representing the significance of the atoning death of Jesus in the Christian religion cross (1C 1.18); metaphorically, the dedication of life and the self-denial that a believer must be prepared to take on himself in following Christ (LU 14.27)”
The word (σταυρός, stauros) “cross” occurs 27 times in the New Testament in 27 verses: Matthew 10:38; 16:24; 27:32; 27:40; 27:42; Mark 8:34; 15:21; 15:30; Mark 15:32; Luke 9:23; 14:27; 23:26; John 19:17; 19:19; 19:25; 19:31; 1 Cor. 1:17; 1:18; Gal. 5:11; 6:12; 6:14; Eph. 2:16; Phil. 2:8; 3:18; Col. 1:20; 2:14; Heb. 12:2.
Now, let’s focus on one of them, Matt 27:40 which says, “You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
This is a definitive verse that deals with exactly what Jesus was crucified on, and the Greek word in the verse is “stauros.” Therefore, Jesus was crucified on a cross.
Click here for the full article.
October 1st, 2010
By John Lennox, Ph.D.
There’s no denying that Stephen Hawking is intellectually bold as well as physically heroic. And in his latest book, the renowned physicist mounts an audacious challenge to the traditional religious belief in the divine creation of the universe.
According to Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, he argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws ‘because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.’
Unfortunately, while Hawking’s argument is being hailed as controversial and ground-breaking, it is hardly new.
For years, other scientists have made similar claims, maintaining that the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the world around us can be interpreted solely by reference to physical laws such as gravity.
It is a simplistic approach, yet in our secular age it is one that seems to have resonance with a sceptical public.
But, as both a scientist and a Christian, I would say that Hawking’s claim is misguided. He asks us to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict.
But contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.
Click here for the full article.
September 29th, 2010
By Carlin Romano
Hawking Said, “Let There Be No God!,” and There was Light!
That headline flashed to all corners of the media universe this month. Of course, we don’t know whether a universe has corners. Truth is, we don’t know much about the universe that isn’t astonishingly inferential. Alas, you’d hardly know that from listening to the retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and his media echo chamber.
The breaking news originated in the latest book by Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design (Bantam), co-written with physicist Leonard Mlodinow. It excited front-page editors as few science tomes do. Britain’s Mirror exclaimed, “Good Heavens! God Did Not Create the Universe, Says Stephen Hawking.” Canada’s National Post drolly chimed in with, “In the Beginning, God Didn’t Have to Do a Thing.”
In his new book, Hawking, the celebrated author of A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988), declares on the first page that “philosophy is dead” because it “has not kept up” with science, which alone can explain the universe. “It is not necessary to invoke God,” the authors write, “to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Hawking sound-bited the hard stuff for interviewers: “Science makes God unnecessary,” he told Good Morning America. Something simply came out of nothing.
If you’ve followed the science-religion debate in recent times, there’s nothing new about such claims. Many scientists take Hawking’s side, some do not. Almost everyone agrees that, as Hawking told ABC News, “One can’t prove that God doesn’t exist.” The Templeton Foundation, which specializes in prodding believers and nonbelievers to discuss such things in civilized ways, has published all sorts of booklets, like “Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?,” in which some eminent scientists answer “Yes” and others answer “No.”
Why, then, the uproar? Largely because Hawking has been anointed by the media as possibly “the smartest man in the world” (ABC News) and the “most revered scientist since Einstein” (The New York Times)—a genius, and so on. A genius, presumably, must be right about everything. Especially if he managed to sell nine million copies of a book.
Click here for the full article.
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